Chapter Text
Solas and I moved through the woods in a silence as brittle as the snow beneath our boots.
There was less than a quarter mile to the place where I’d left my horse, but already my thoughts raced ahead. I could not return to the Imperial Palace, not with the prince in residence, and Val Royeaux was out of the question. Thanks to Varric, the whole of Thedas shed crocodile tears for the Herald and the Hermit; there was no place spies would not recognize us.
Although…We kept a hunting lodge not so far from the coast, perhaps if— the bay of a hound caught my ear.
Not one, but many, and raucous laughter. I scarcely had time to fasten my mask, which settled like ice across my skin an instant before the dogs came into view. Five or six Chevaliers trailed behind them, feathers flashing gold between the trees.
Merde.
In Orlais, the only thing more dangerous than being caught alone with a man not my husband would be to act as if I’d been caught at all. I altered my course and Solas shortened his steps to grow the distance between us. Oh, he’d always taken a perverse sort of pleasure in pretending to follow my lead.
“Good sers,” I shouted, mirth cast as carefully as a spell.
A surprised chorus answered your Majesty, and even at a distance I recognized Jehen and Proulx among them. Then the dogs were on us, chuffing through the snow at our feet and rioting with excitement.
“Forgiveness, lady,” said the kennelman.
While he scurried between us, at a total loss to tame them, one of the chevaliers rode to the fore. His golden armor nearly glowed in the diffused winter light, and I crossed my ankles in a mocking curtsey.
“Hunting rabbits, my lord?”
The chevaliers held their nervous tongues as he circled, but the round was won. Behind a mask that matched my own, the Emperor’s eyes crinkled with wry amusement.
“I see only a lioness.”
For all that he despised The Game, Gaspard excelled at it; whatever his misgivings, they were not for display. I came close enough to lay a hand on his mare, stalling to think of how I might introduce Solas without resorting to the name he’d all too famously spelled for Varric, but it was the Hermit himself who solved my dilemma.
“Your Imperial Majesty,” he said, touching one knee to the snow. “I am Fen’Harel, an ambassador of The People.”
The name grated across my ears, sharp against memories still raw. A tangle of blankets in a castle long forgotten. Firelight along the stairwell. Red canvas in the Arbor Wilds. Fennehn shouting, a fever dream in Wycome, and cold edge of Jovan’s blade. I remembered the raw dread that followed Corypheus’ defeat giving way to disbelief, denial in the long years since. Hadn’t I imagined it?
“Souveri,” said Gaspard, and I blinked back to present; I’d missed something.
“If it please my lord,” I said, for there was no safer answer.
“Have you lost your horse again?”
“No, I’ll fetch her.”
“Nonsense,” he said, turning back to the chevaliers. “Jehan, find her Majesty’s courser. If you have the skill. No doubt she has it hidden behind some clever enchantment.”
Perhaps another chevalier would have been chaffed under the command, but not Jehan. I’d once fought to free her from the Citadelle du Corbeau. Solas has been at my side then, back before…Maker, back before the Civil War had ended, when I was newly his vhenan.
My breath was coming short. It was supposed to be over. A thing twice dead and buried.
“Go, go,” said Gaspard, dismissing the rest. “The trail is cold, and so am I.”
He slipped one foot from the stirrup and offered me his arm. I didn’t look to Solas as I mounted, although I desperately wished I could. Would he side with the Dalish and brand me a traitor, or could he see that I did more good for The People as Souveri’alas de Chalons?